Friday, April 25, 2014

bad girls

Donna Summer was crowned the Queen of Disco when she strutted to the center of the charts with the hot stuff of this classic concupiscence. While a couple of her singles ('Love to Love You, Baby' and 'I Feel Love') had been pop hits; she had consistently made waves on the dance chart. In 1978, she began a string of smash hits with 'Last Dance', 'MacArthur Park', and 'Heaven Knows'. She also developed an addiction to prescription medication and suffered a nervous breakdown. Her recovery was tied in with a return to her faith. It was around this time that Summer appeared in a televised 'Music for UNICEF: A Gift of Song'which raised money for the world's hungry children.

When she began working on her next album, she came up with a concept about prostitution that sought to bring awareness to the issues surrounding working girls, based on a song she had written a couple of years before. It became a double album with each side focusing on a different dance hybrid: side one incorporating rock and new wave, side two featured disco sound, side three had ballads and country, and side four focused on a more experimental electronic dance music.

The album went to number twenty-four in the Netherlands; twenty-three in the UK; seven in Germany; six in Australia; three in Norway, New Zealand, and Sweden; and number one in Canada and the US. The album went triple platinum in the US and sold over five million copies worldwide. It was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year.